Are these elections relevant? Will anyone care?
David Cameron is trying to use these as a platform to call for a general election in the UK, will the results of these european elections indicate the mood of the country or will people just be reacting to current issues which they will forget further down the line?
A remarkable number of independent candidates this time round and its also the first time out for the Jury Team- it will be interesting to see how they fare.
As a non voter for nearly ten years (in all elections, local, national or otherwise) should I bother now? The political process is so fundamentally flawed is a vote for anyone just an endorsement of a system that I don’t believe in?
I suspect you dont believe in the choices you have the option to vote for rather than the political system itself.
At the end of the day if something new and compelling does emerge and enough people vote for it the political process will change.
anybody got a spare gorilla suit out there?
Jericoa
Well dude, as soon as you’re old enough, run for something…
I watched with helpless detachment as the most right-wing person I know came within a hair’s breadth of getting voted in on this thing:
http://www.juryteam.org/candidates.php
with (if you had an extra ball and an extra set of fingers) so few votes that you could count them on your fingers and toes.
I would be rubbish as a politician.
I don’t feel like signing up to any of the existing parties and unless you are a celeb or prepared to demean yourself in public in some way to get public attension (or if you are a celeb already) you will have no chance.
It is a system that gives the illusion of choice and democracy.
As we hear today 2 MP’s have ‘decided to stand down at the next election for family reasons’.
The truth being they have been caught red handed with their fingers in the till. They will bleat ‘it was within the rules’ but what worth are rules you make yourself? That is no defence for these people.
I know, I am going on a diet Rule no 1 I make for myself is to eat as many cream cakes as I can…
Yet they are allowed to slip away quietly into the night and take their ill gotten gains with them.
The bankers and politicians have bled us dry morally and financially and now slink off to build their bunkers safe and warm for the coming storm to watch the show and say ‘ crikey I am glad I got out when I could… looks nasty weather out there’.
A bit of a non-sequitur… but I just left this comment on The Daily Mail website… and am republishing it here… to see how their commitment to free speech and democracy actually stands up in the face of criticism
Daily Mail’s risible attempts to link the EU to Nazism
”
Attempts to conflate The EU with Nazism are ridiculous.
Mussolini defined fascism as the marriage of corporation and state. The reason various elements of (the unarguably right-wing) media are so anti-EU, is that the EU stands in the way of the way of unfettered corporate power – by way (among other things) of anti-trust law, that individual countries have either not the will or the strength to impose.
The world has changed such that we need to organise at a regional level. The EU is how we (democratically) do this.
And please, let’s not forget that The Daily Mail actually supported the Nazis in the 30s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail
Now – lets see how honest The Daily Mail’s commitment to free-speech really is – I’ll publish this comment elsewhere with a link back to this page to see if they censor it.
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Nick,
A non- result from the Daily Mail then?
Apparently not. Quelle surprise, as I gather they say…